Tag: blog

“What an odd thing a diary is; the things you omit are more important than those you put in.” Simone de Beauvoir

I have four blogs left to write; when I saw this quote, I really stopped to think about what I hadn’t written about yet.

There are lots of near death stories: swimming topless in Lake Sakakawea with a bunch of girls, while our friend (as a joke) drove the boat away, as I dog paddled frantically to stay afloat. Jumping off of the catwalk into the middle of the river because my boyfriend told me he would hold my hand and then let go. Was it an omen for the marriage? Riding with same boyfriend in his car, spinning “cookies” on the lake as the ice made cracking sounds below us…. I survived those times.

I have always loved to hostess parties and there were a couple of great ones, including my friends 16th birthday (the friend who drove the boat away in the above paragraph), which I talked my folks into letting me have at the farm. When the bars closed, adults joined us, going into the house to visit with my parents. Finally at 2:00 Mom asked me to tell everyone to leave. My parents didn’t drink; I don’t know what they were thinking. I got up the next morning and my sister Lisa was out with a garbage bag, picking up the beer cans. I went out to help and she said she had found one sock and one pair of underwear underneath the grain truck.

My 16th was really fun. I took all of my birthday money (sorry Grandma) and talked my cousin into buying a keg. It fit perfectly in my car where the spare tire was supposed to go. It was an old station wagon my Dad was letting me drive, after I rolled my first car. The party was a huge success. The police raided it, but I don’t think they really expected us to leave; they just enjoyed watching us run. Some of us girls camped out in the station wagon. Our friend Clyde, showed us a safe place to park, where he didn’t think anyone would bother us. I shudder to think of our naiveté; It never occurred to me that someone would think of bothering us. The next morning, we went in to town early to have breakfast. I remember the looks on the early risers, as we crawled out of that car. We looked wild; we really weren’t.

I have left out many stories that I could use to prove a point or validate a decision I made, but they involve other people, so I hold those back, from you my diary.

I haven’t shared, in much detail at all until now, how incredibly much it has hurt me, that there are friends and family members whose disapproval of my blog sometimes weighs me down like a layer of dirt guilt. The violation of my youth is enough; the missing support adds to the pain and is harder to put away when it is current. Don’t ever doubt that those of you, who have supported me with your kindness, will ever be forgotten by me.

Some of my greatest disappointments were women in my life who betrayed me. Men I was trained to expect it from, but not the girlfriends I trusted. I wished women were more supportive of each other, more honest and less bitchy. We tend to be our own worst enemies sometimes. It is hard to fight the peer pressures and spousal pressures, but I’m hopeful we are learning. Loyalty is priceless; let’s keep learning.

There are other things I wouldn’t put in a diary and wouldn’t write to you; moments of bad decisions, shame, and things that don’t need to be remembered. Posterity, how do we want to be remembered? I told my oldest son one day, “When you get up to do my eulogy, don’t put me on a pedestal and make me sound like someone I’m not. Tell the truth.” He grinned and said, “Don’t worry Mom, I won’t, and I will tell the truth” Now I am worried.! 🙂

I don’t know if anything I have left out is more important than anything I’ve said. What’s important is the outcome: a life well lived, a family well loved, gratefulness for friends, and hopefully a dog, or granddogs, and a bottle of wine.

When I started blogging, my goal was to be disciplined enough to write one years worth, 52 weeks, of blogs on surviving. I jump in and out of my own sexual abuse survival experiences; while trying to find something that is humorous or will interest you the next. What was I hoping to gain through this process? I had many initial thoughts, but now I think it was my voice, and while I was finding my voice, so were millions of women in the “Me Too” movement across the United States and even other parts of the world.

The “Me Too” movement is part of a pendulum motion that has left some men afraid of flirting, not knowing exactly where the boundaries are, afraid of missing a cue and adding to the unsureness of their place. Rest assured the pendulum will swing back into a place that most of us will find comfort…we will have found our voices…hopefully people will listen to them and if they don’t we can only get louder. The movement is important, as uncomfortable as we sometimes feel dealing with it. My blog has made people uncomfortable too. My sense of knowing it was right comes from you who read it. I have men and women read it; people from many different countries (Australia, China, Philippines, Spain, Germany, South Africa etc. ) have read it and that is exciting to me, not because those people make me think differently about my purpose of writing, but because I know we are the same..what matters to us is the same. When we get past the rhetoric and fear, we are more similar than not, regardless of color, religion, sexual orientation etc.

I have 8 weeks left to write; to share my thoughts and continue to finesse my voice. I’m going to stay honest and keep myself vulnerable. When I’m done with my blog, I may continue to blog periodically but won’t post on Facebook. If you are interested after that point, you can “follow” the post, which means whenever I write something, it will show up in your e-mail box, like a bad penny. 🙂 I have several book ideas roaming around in my head. I started one years ago, but lacked the discipline, and to be fair, the time to finish it. My priority first will be to write about my mother’s death.

When Mom was given the sentence of Lung Cancer; it happened so fast we were unprepared. That’s how cancer works; it snaps up with no apparent provocation and slams the victim into the wall with its severity and the fear it so generously provides. I don’t believe anyone can be prepared for it. It also is a horrifying experience for the family. I’m not going to say in any uncertain terms that when you are fighting for your life and fearful of losing it, that your families feelings are as important…….or are they? They would be to me, but as my husband tells me, “You don’t know until you experience it.” The hospice pamphlet we were provided with was helpful, but it didn’t help any of us prepare for what was coming, until the dying process that occurred at the very end.

I hate very little and very few. I don’t want to give my power and energy away to anyone, or anything that doesn’t deserve it, but I have a strong feeling about cancer, and my way to work through that feeling is to give it a voice. I hope you will continue my journey of survival with me the next few weeks. If you are willing to personal message me any insight or thoughts you might have, please feel free to send them to me. If you have a favorite blog of mine, feel free to share it, or PM me and let me know. We have been in partnership the last year and I hope it has meant a fraction to you, what it has meant to me..

Trust; the way a child feels about their parent, a dog feels about its owner, a child towards a grandparent, a spouse to spouse….. how do we define it or explain how we lose it?

I don’t know what was wrong with me, when I was a kid. I loved to jump… I was like a little Mexican Jumping Bean… My Dad tells the story of standing in front of the barn working on something; I had climbed to the top of the old two story barn; was only about five, and said, “Daddy should I jump?” He said, “I don’t care.”, never in a million years thinking I would. He said he saw a shadow come over his shoulder, and he looked and I had landed in the hay pile next to him. I jumped off of everything…one afternoon I was practicing my jumping bean routine and Dad had tired of it. He came upstairs, in our old farm house and said, “I’m going to break you of your jumping.” He proceeded to have me jump off of everything: beds, dressers, chairs, and finally the banister of the stairs. He caught me every time, until the bannister. I jumped and he stepped back. When I landed on the floor, I asked him why he hadn’t caught me. He said, “Don’t trust anyone, not even your Papa.” He told me later that his father had said the same thing to him, at some point in his life. I understood little of trust at that age, and only thought about it retrospectively later. How sad it is not to be able to trust.

I don’t jump anymore: I’m afraid of heights and would probably break an ankle, or a hip. 🙂 I’m not very good at trusting either. Do you trust? Who would you let catch you if you jumped. I have seen the trust fall demonstrated at conferences. You fall back into a colleagues arms…. scary!

I do still try…trusting with bits at a time…my husband, our children, (I trust most dogs!) working on it! Working on trust leads to disappointment sometimes. My oldest son told me that I always expect people to do the right thing and that’s why I’m disappointed. I do expect people to do the right thing and I’m tough; I can stand a little disappointment as long as there’s the chance… Trust!

You know from reading earlier blogs, that I obviously love the idea of catharsis. I’ve not only seen it work in others, but love the technique to clean out my own darkness. I was doing some research into Catharsis and came across several articles that said the Catharsis, before it was identified as way to clear the mind through writing, painting, drawing, photography etc., was considered conceptual. The concept was of light being a purifier. What a great concept! Think of how the sun bring up our mood and light brightens a room; it makes sense that the concept of light opening up our thoughts and soul would be identified as catharsis.

What do you do for catharsis? Writing is so cathartic; it helps us cleanse our minds, sharpen our focus, and clears the way for better things, so this is what I’m thinking:

Would you like to guest blog? You can be totally anonymous. The only requirements would be: that you trust me, (lol. not too much to ask?), I need to know who the author is as I can’t publish something on my blog that I’m not responsible for, that you only tell your own story, we can only share what we know for sure, that your writing is not sexually explicit.

If you want to publish under your name, I would certainly love to give you the credit, other than Anonymous 1, Anonymous 2, etc. 🙂 You could write a story, a poem, a song… This is your shot, to say what you need to say. My e-mail is luanna77@hotmail.com, so if you are interested, e-mail me that you are interested or your “catharsis.” If I don’t respond back within a couple of days, e-mail me again. I don’t want you to get lost in my junk file!

I don’t have clue what to expect, but want you to have the chance to let in the light. Be brave!

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

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